Posts Tagged ‘infosec’

6 Actions Businesses Should Take During Cyber Security Awareness Month

Tuesday, October 21st, 2014

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. It would seem the breaches announced virtually every day of this  month so far were orchestrated to highlight the need for organizations to beef up their information security efforts and improve their controls.

Sadly instead, cyber incidents seem to have become de rigueur these days. Consumers are getting fed up, and government agencies are proposing more laws. The tide is turning, and soon organizations will be held accountable for more effectively protecting their systems and information, or they will likely face much steeper fines and penalties than ever before. So, now’s the time to take action! Here are six actions you to take this month to start improving your organization’s information security program and associated efforts. (more…)

Every Business Must Be Prepared for the Unimaginable

Tuesday, September 30th, 2014

Were you surprised to hear about the worker at the Chicago O’Hare airport last Friday? Certainly I was. Who would have ever thought someone working in the control center would light the hardware on fire, and then try to commit suicide? Unimaginable, right? However, what I was more surprised about was that there was no roll-over contingency operations center in place in the event something catastrophe took out the O’Hare operations center. After all, Chicago is in an area with a wide range of weather events, from blizzards and ice to severe storms and tornadoes, and everything in between. Not to mention that all airports are considered to be a target of a wide number of terrorist groups.

Just two days prior to the incident (more…)

If Compliance Isn’t Documented It Didn’t Happen

Monday, September 22nd, 2014

Most of the 250+ organizations I’ve audited, and the hundreds of others I’ve had as clients, hate documentation. At least creating documentation. So, they don’t do it, or they do it very poorly. Or, they document things they don’t need to, and fail to document the important things. And then, considering all that documentation, they often don’t retain it long enough, or forget where they put it.

Last year I wrote an article about legal retention length requirements. Now I’m focusing on the types of compliance activities organizations need to document, and then the need to retain that documentation for the appropriate periods of time. (more…)

Address Privacy During Social Media Marketing

Friday, August 29th, 2014

Over the past few months I’ve been creating some social media marketing privacy guidelines and requirements for a couple of my large clients. Today I read a post from a fellow IBM Midsize Insider contributor, Jason Hannula, “Social Media: Enterprise Content or Customer Relationship Information?” It stated that “93% of marketers are using social media for business.” A large number of these are from small and midsize organizations. It is important for these organizations to not only keep Jason’s suggestions in mind, and follow the business’s data governance requirements, but also to make sure privacy is also appropriately addressed. Many, perhaps most, small to midsize businesses do not yet have social media privacy requirements in place. (more…)

Avoid this Common Privacy Choice Mistake

Monday, August 25th, 2014

Many marketing professionals have a common temptation; they want to send as many marketing messages to as many people as possible, and they would love to send it to all folks who have ever been customers or clients of their business, and often times actually want to simply send to everyone whose email address they can obtain in any way.

Privacy professionals make many efforts to guide marketers on what is acceptable and not acceptable. After all, (more…)

Security is Action…Privacy is the Result of Action

Thursday, July 31st, 2014

What is the difference between security and privacy?

Many of my clients are small and midsized businesses. They often express confusion over what each of these terms (neither of which have a universally-accepted definition) actually means, how they are different, and how they are similar. This is important for business leaders to understand so they can make appropriate decisions within their information security and privacy management programs. Especially in small and midsize businesses, where there may not be a specific position to address either of these important topics. Let’s start with considering at a high level the differences between information security and privacy. (more…)

Businesses are Also Synthetic ID Theft Targets

Monday, July 21st, 2014

Early this month I was happy to discuss synthetic identity theft on the Great Day show. I briefly talked about how synthetic identity theft was also committed in the U.S. using business employer identity numbers (EINs). Crooks often target small and midsize businesses for this type of crime. After the show I got a lot of questions asking for more information about synthetic EIN identity theft. (more…)

10 Big Data Analytics Privacy Problems

Thursday, June 26th, 2014

Big data analytics are being used more widely every day for an even wider number of reasons. These new methods of applying analytics certainly can bring innovative improvements for business. For example, retail businesses are successfully using big data analytics to predict the hot items each season, and to predict geographic areas where demand will be greatest, just to name a couple of uses.

The power of big data analytics is so great that in addition to all the positive business possibilities, there are just as many new privacy concerns being created.  Here are ten of the most significant privacy risks. (more…)

Using “Compliant” Stuff Doesn’t Result in Full Compliance

Wednesday, June 11th, 2014

In the past couple of weeks I’ve spoken with five different small to mid-size organizations who have had a software or hardware vendor basically tell them, “Our product is HIPAA compliant! Use it and you will also be fully HIPAA compliant!” How can that be? In three words; it can’t be. Here’s what is most likely going on with those claims. (more…)

Privacy Lessons from Snapchat

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014

There are many new small and mid-size business start-ups who are offering a wide range of online services, mobile apps, and smart devices. There are also many businesses that have been around a long time that see an opportunity and so are expanding into these areas.  I’ve spoken with many such businesses, and they often make two common privacy mistakes: (more…)